Ghanaian startup Tiny Reusers is an e-commerce platform that facilitates the sale of preloved and new baby, kids and maternity items from private individuals to baby shops, importers and local producers.
Tiny Reusers was formed a year ago when founder Lisa Werk Nielsen had been in Ghana for about six months, and had struggled to find an easy way to buy good quality, preloved items.
“We started as a physical shop in one half of my house, but quickly realised that this idea could take off and to do so we needed to go online. So, in March of this year, we went live with our fully-fledged online shop,” she told Disrupt Africa.
The startup, she said, has an inclusive business model, because everybody can become a seller through it.
“Even if you have only one item to sell, we can help you out. When you sign up as a seller with us, you drop off all items you want to sell at our warehouse where we do a quality check to make sure the items live up to our quality markers,” Nielsen said.
“We keep the items in our warehouse until sold, or until the contract runs out, to ensure a convenient shopping experience for our customers who can buy from many different sellers, but only have to deal with one company and delivery, and to make sure that the inventory listed on our website is always accurate.”
Nielsen’s wager is that you can find everything in Ghana; you just don’t know where to find it.
“That’s also the problem in the baby care industry. And as a mom, you just don’t have the time to run around to different markets, shops and online places to find the items you are looking for. On top of that, with all the environmental degradation that’s happening, there’s a healthy trend towards reusing and baby items are perfect for this as they are hardly used, so buyers can get like-new items for a quarter of the price,” she said.
Nobody had seen these two issues as possibilities and acted on them, so that’s what we did with Tiny Reusers.”
Self-funded, the startup recently secured a small amount of grant funding from MEST after being selected to take part in MEST Express accelerator’s first-ever cohort focused on sustainability. Uptake has been strong.
“We have generated sales since day one, and they continue to be steady. We still need to generate a lot more brand awareness so we can increase both our inventory and our sales,” said Nielsen.
“We’ve handled about 650 sales transactions and worked with more than 115 sellers so far. We take a commission on every sale. As we grow our customer and community base we will also be offering advertising spots for companies in the baby care and maternity space.”
Tiny Reusers plans on running a test in Senegal in the near future as it begins expansion, but everywhere it goes Nielsen said its primary challenge is trust.
“A big competitor are the many open markets where women have been selling used clothing and items for decades, the Instagram pages that facilitate items from people’s homes, and the WhatsApp groups where people sell to each other directly as also competitors. Also, the major baby shops that sell new items online such as Amalena and Kyemen and platforms such as Jiji and Jumia that facilitate sale of preloved items or new items, respectively,” she said.
“The biggest “competitor” however, is the lack of trust people still have in buying things online. We still have a lot of work to do to overcome the trust issues created by scammers and fraudster. We have many customers who prefer to send us mobile money directly, even if that payment option is also available on the website. As one of the players in a still young online industry, we are part of paying the price of building this trust.”
